By Matt Garrett
Fresh and Flavorful: South Beach Diet Recipes
You've started the South Beach Diet. Your refrigerator, consequently, is loaded with proteins: low-fat cuts of poultry, pork, lamb, and beef; fish and shellfish; eggs, soy products, and fat-reduced cheese.
You've also stocked up on low-glycemic vegetables, and lurking in the background are beans, nuts and a bottle of olive oil. All you need is some good recipes.
Because Phase I of the South Beach Diet requires you to abandon the breads, potatoes, pasta, sugar-saturated goodies, and even fruits that found their way to you in the past, you will, to compensate for dietetically fatal boredom with culinary variety, have to be very creative. Your recipes may make or break your success!
You will, until you finish Phase 1, be dining on protein, vegetables and salads, and the occasional snack of nuts, olives, or sugar-free desserts. Here are some SouthBeach Diet recipes which will enlighten you on the possibilities of the salads, entrees, and even desserts:
Recipes Phase 1:
Greek Salad
Whisk together:
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 T fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp teaspoon dried oregano leaves
1/4 tsp salt
and pour over:
1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and sliced
1/2 diced tomato
1/4 c diced red onion
1/4 cup crumbled low fat feta cheese
Serve this with:
1 (3/4-inch thick) salmon steak
1 oz. butter
1/4 lemon
Fresh mint, dill, and fennel, chopped and mixed. I prefer, as a complement to the Greek salad, dill and mint, but lemon thyme and/or tarragon are also very good.
Salt and pepper, to taste.
Grease a baking dish with butter; then place the salmon in it, drizzle the salmon with juice from the lemon, add salt and pepper to taste, and allow it to season.
When you are ready to cook, dot the salmon with the remaining butter, wrap it in foil, and bake at 350-400 degrees for 25 minutes, or until tender.
Sprinkle a garnish of the chopped herbs on your plate; place the fish, topped with the remaining herbs, on the garnish, and spoon the juices from the baking dish over the fish. Allow the warm juices to release the flavor of the herbs for a minute.
I use about 1 tbsp chopped mint and ½ tbsp each of chopped dill and fennel.
Phase 1 South Beach Diet recipes for dessert are largely restricted to cheesecake-like ricotta and sugar free gelatin combinations, but the available gelatin flavors provide good interest.
One of the more elegant and easily prepared Phase 1 South Beach Diet recipes is for Mocha Ricotta Crème:
Combine in a bowl:
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1/2 tsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
1 pkg. sugar substitute
Top with a dusting of espresso powder and four or five mini-chocolate chips, and chill. For a more Continental result, replace the vanilla with orange, coffee, raspberry, or rum extract.
The success of your South-Beach Diet recipes, in Phase 1, will depend largely on the inclusion of fresh herbs, spices, and flavored extracts. But if you're someone who has never cooked with them before, you are in for a revelation; South Beach Diet recipes in Phases 2 and 3 which do not call for them, them, even with the re-introduction of fruits and carbs, will seem flat!
South Beach Diet recipes, prepared with imagination and the freshest of ingredients, will be your ticket to a lifetime of delicious, healthy eating!
Author: Matt Garrett © 2007 http://www.DietHealthSecrets.com Discover the secret of better health through good nutrition...
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